The Sixth Annual Walking Words in Telluride revs up tonight, with its traditional progressive literary dinner at 6 p.m., beginning at Tellurice.

This year's walk has one significant difference: Walking Words founder Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will not be leading the charge.

"I'm not going – can you believe it?" she says, from home, where she's busy mothering not-quite-a-month-old Finn Philo Trommer.

Philo, explains Trommer, who answers to the moniker Word Woman, is her husband's father's middle name.

"We looked it up on the Internet," she adds. "It means leader of the people."

Trommer founded Walking Words in 1999: "We wanted to do something in the shoulder season, which is a less expensive time to be in Telluride," she explains. Then too, she goes on to confess:

"The main reason I do this stuff is because it's something I want to do."

The Friday-night progressive dinner component of the two-day Walking Words program is capped at 35, and always sells out.

This year's event starts with appetizers and a performance from novelist Kate Niles; then, diners move to Rustico for entrees and a reading by poet Jane Hilberry. It finishes up with dessert at Café San Sophia and a reading by non-fiction writer Gary Ferguson. A cash bar is available at all three locations.

"It's intimate by design," says Trommer of the evening, with the authors and 35 participants moving around "because you keep walking together" and then sit in new configurations at each of the three restaurants: "You get to engage with the other participants and with the authors."

Ellen Mettrick, Trommer's co-director at Walking Words, will be the hostess this year. "She'll do great," Trommer says; then, sounding just a little bit wistful, she adds: "It's really hard to let it go. But, being a mother, I'm just learning how to let go more and more and more."

The Friday night and all-day Saturday program is, she says, "more than just a reading – and more than just a dinner. It's an event!" she says.

Saturday's Walking Words program is devoted to short workshops in fiction, poetry and nonfiction, all at the Ah Haa School. From 9 to 11:30 a.m. Kate Niles leads a fiction workshop; from 12:30 to 3 p.m., it's poetry with Jane Hilberry; and from 3:30 to 6 p.m. is nonfiction with Gary Ferguson.

Each workshop costs $15 and is limited to 12 people. No materials (except pen and paper) or previous writing experience are necessary. To register, call the Ah Haa School at 970-728-3886. This program is made possible, in part, by a grant from Telluride's Council on the Arts and Special Events.